"What are you thinking about?" they would ask him.
"I was thinking that if I were rich I would marry a real lady, a noblewoman—by God, I would! A colonel's daughter, for example, and, Lord! how I would love her! I should be on fire with love of her, because, my brothers, I once roofed the country house of a certain colonel—"
"And he had a widowed daughter; we 've heard all that before!" interrupted Petr in an unfriendly tone.
But Ephimushka, spreading his hands out on his knees, rocked to and fro, his hump looking as if it were chiselling the air, and continued:
"Sometimes she went into the garden, all in white; glorious she looked. I looked at her from the roof, and I did n't know what the sun had done to me. But what caused that white light? It was as if a white dove had flown from under her feet! She was just a cornflower in cream! With such a lady as that, one would like all one's life to be night."
"And how would you get anything to eat?" asked Petr gruffly. But this did not disturb Ephimushka.
"Lord!" he exclaimed. "Should we want much? Besides, she is rich."
Osip laughed.
"And when are you going in for all this dissipation, Ephimushka, you rogue?"
Ephimushka never talked on any other subject but women, and he was an unreliable workman. At one time he worked excellently and profitably, at another time he did not get on at all; his wooden hammer tapped the ridges lazily, leaving crevices. He always smelt of train-oil, but he had a smell of his own as well, a healthy, pleasant smell like that of a newly cut tree.